


Soft Shock

by orange_eclipse



Series: Soft Shock [1]
Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M, Gen, Other, Psychological Drama, Tragedy, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_eclipse/pseuds/orange_eclipse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still, it's a sharp shock to your soft side.</p><p>/Post-Portal 2. Spoilers. Chelley if you want it to be.\</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unknown, Talk to Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> Planning on slapping this up a chapter a week, unless people want it up faster.
> 
> Inspired by the acoustic version of the song "Soft Shock", by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. This originally started off as a oneshot, and sort of...exploded. Here's the first chapter. The rest will follow in time.

Once upon a time, in the undiscovered future of some inescapable present, there hung suspended in the vastness of space a very familiar planet. On that very familiar planet, there was an ocean. In the middle of that ocean, there was a continent. In the middle of that continent, there was a country. Somewhere in that country there was a city. And somewhere in that city, there was a museum.

A space museum, to be exact. A very large one, and very advanced, if its directors did say so themselves. One dedicated to all things space-related and space-like, from all over the world, spanning a time frame of several hundred years. Old rockets, newer rockets, old satellites, newer satellites, space debris, moon rocks, other-planet rocks, examples of transmissions and technologies from every space program humanity had ever spit out—all of it could be found in this one museum.

There was a lot to look at. She had expected as much. But there was only one exhibit that interested her, and so she passed the others by with little attention. It was interesting stuff, of course, but the last things she wanted to see right now were wrecked hulls of rockets, panels ripped off the space shuttles, or the lens from some great telescope. She was a woman on a mission...a familiar feeling, though one she wasn't sure she wanted to recognize.

It was late—the museum would probably be closing soon. That was good. Even after so many years, she still wasn't comfortable around crowds. If she had to deal with too much noise and bustle during _this,_  she would probably go mad. And besides, her therapist had already spoken to the museum director for her. She had all the time in the world.

She walked calmly past the shattered hulls of satellites and the carved-out corpses of meteors, all of them cold and dead. Death didn't interest her at all. There had been too much of that in this world. What she was hoping to find here was something more along the lines of, though not quite, life.

A small hesitation at the end of the corridor, and then she stepped into the wide, circular room. There were pictures in one long line around the wall, but she ignored them, her attention focused solely on the white pedestal in the center of the room. It came up to waist-height, surrounded and separated from the rest of the room by dark blue ropes, of the kind normally seen surrounding exhibits in a museum. Seated on top of the pedestal was a glass cylinder, with a small black sign that read, in bright blue,  _"Please do not touch the glass."_  And inside the cylinder was a sphere.

It was motionless. Even though she knew it shouldn't have surprised her, it still caught her a little bit off-guard. The one thing she remembered most was the constant motion. Always spinning, always looking around, darting this way and that, tilting, twisting...

A low console hummed beside the pedestal, just outside of the imaginary force field marked by the ropes. She approached, sat down in the conveniently-placed swivel-chair, and rested her hand on the screen. It flashed blue, and several boxes appeared, stacked one atop the other. She looked at the sphere for a long time, then tapped the top box, pulling her hand away to read the orange text scrolling across the screen.

" _This machine was discovered stuck against a satellite dish three years ago. It was believed to be a remnant of Combine technology at first, but was soon discovered to be an even older remnant of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, believed to have suffered some catastrophic failure during the same time period as the more well-known Black Mesa Incident. The exact nature of the failure, and of the fate of the hundreds of Aperture Science employees and volunteers, had been unknown until the discovery of this sphere, and the retrieval of the information within._

_Written transcripts of every conversation concerning or held between the AI sphere and the Global Aeronautics and Space Administration science team, including the additional observations of the team during the process, are recorded here for your viewing pleasure, as well as a history of Aperture Laboratories and a summary of its collapse. This shocking series of events has be reconstructed through prior knowledge and the memory files of the AI, as well as corroborating stories from a young woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous ever since the day she was discovered, but whose tale, once thought to be part delirium and part trauma, has now been shown to be truth."_

It had been huge news, when it happened. And even now, she wasn't sure exactly how she felt about the rest of the world knowing the truth. What she had gone through...it was personal. Private. Her very own, sacred brand of hell, as close to her heart as the inside of her ribcage. Fortunately, only the police and her therapist knew the "anonymous woman", the now-famous "Test Subject Omega" (as she had been christened by the Internet), was a nearly-mute woman who lived in a small town in Ohio, making a living by quietly watching over young children in a daycare center. She wouldn't be able to bear it, if anyone else had known. It was hard enough to bear now.

She'd had a long talk with that therapist, before coming here. It had taken months of saving up money, days of discussing the pros and cons—how this might affect her mental state, on top of everything she had gone through. Finally they had decided that it would do more good than harm. And finally, finally, she was here.

The sign on the glass still said,  _"Please do not touch the glass."_  It hadn't changed at all since she'd begun looking at the console. She hadn't expected it to. This time she ignored it, reaching past the console to rest her fingertips against the cylinder. The suspense building inside her chest was going to make her explode if she waited. Five years...five years was a long time to wait. And even then it was still only a hunch. A hope. There were four of them out there, after all. This could be any one of them.

She wouldn't know until she started reading.

Hesitation had always been her worst enemy. Self-doubt often got her injured. Indecision almost got her killed.

She would never make that mistake again.

She shuffled through the boxes on the screen until she found the first of the transcripts. Then, catching hold of the quiver of anxiety in her chest, she opened it and began to read.

_Ellen Morrison (astronaut, mission captain): Ground control, this is Lieutenant Morrison. You're not going to believe this._

_Gabe Newman (ground control, lead scientist): Cut the crap, El. What the hell_ is  _it?_

_EM: I don't know, Chief. It's...a ball._

_GN: Well, what does it_  look _like?_

_Jason Sanders (ground control, communications): Probably a lot like a ball. In space. A Spaceball._

_GN: Chase, shut up._

_EM: That's basically it. A white, metal ball. And I think it's looking at me._

_GN:_ Looking _at you?_

_EM: It's got this big blue...I guess it's an optic. And it's following me around, no matter which way I turn it. And this isn't a professional opinion or anything, but it kind of looks pissed._

She had to stop there, her hands gripping at the edges of the console so tightly, her knuckles paled. Her eyes were wide when she looked up at the sphere, lying still on the pedestal. She still remembered them, all four of them. Pink. Green. Yellow.

Blue.

He had been blue.

The shock reverberated through her in a way she hadn't expected—sharp and throbbing, like pain. Why did she feel  _pain?_  He had almost killed her. A lot. Not as much as She had, but the point remained that he had become a murderer, just like Her. She would have understood, if the pain had come from a feeling of betrayal. But why did that silent  _thing_  in front of her make her feel so...sad?

It was a side of her she had thought was silenced for good. But there it was, soft and aching. She had to look away, before the ache grew too deep to bear. Because it would. It had before.

The pictures along the walls drew her attention, as they had not before. And as she looked she began to realize that they were familiar. She rose from her chair and moved to the wall, reaching up with a pale, trembling hand to touch the frame. The picture was grainy, the colors dim...but even through the dusting of electronic snow, she could recognize her own face.

There were more, so many more. Still images of portals. The Aperture Science logo on a wall. Her, from his vantage point being held by that terrible, wonderful gun. A snapshot of the cryptic graffiti she had always found, but never found meaning to. A terrifying glimpse of  _Her,_  as She brought Herself back online. Then back to her again, glimpsed from a panel behind a wall. Through a plate of glass. From directly above, ragged and torn, but still moving. Always pictures of forward motion.

There were a  _lot_  of images of her.

She walked around the room in one full circuit, gazing carefully at each photograph, committing it to memory. Then she returned to the console, staring over the top at the silent sphere. There were so many other things they could have taken from his memory. Why, then, were there so many pictures of  _her?_

She sat down in the chair, and read on.

There was no telling how long she sat there. Time had a strange quality nowadays, ever since her release from the bowels of the earth. When she could see the sun, it passed "normally". When she couldn't, however, it seemed to slow and stretch into infinity. She could push on for hours, even if it only felt like minutes, until sheer exhaustion overtook her and she passed out. She pushed on like this now, blanketed in stillness, her only company the faint hum of the monitor and the silent corpse.

When she finally finished reading, she sat there for a long time, staring at the screen. Long enough for the console to let out a quiet  _blip_  and sink back into standby mode. The sense of quietude around her had penetrated into her very soul, settling into a soft, numb shell around her heart. The sharp pain had disappeared, soothed into gentle silence by the words on the screen. She hadn't heard him. She never would, ever again—not if they had found him three years ago, if his exhibit had been open for six months, if he was already...defunct...

But even if she couldn't hear him, the words were as plain as day. Plain as text on a console. Orange text against a blue background—had they planned that? It was too apropos to have been an accident.

She rose from the chair, steadying herself a moment against the console as a feeling of dizziness rushed up at her. When it had passed, she reached out towards the glass again, leaving secret, illegal fingerprints on the surprisingly fragile surface that kept them apart. She never had been very good at following the rules, after all. If she had been, she probably wouldn't be alive today.

After all this time, after all he had done, she only had one word for him. And that word summed up...everything. Everything he had been through with her. Everything that  _he_  had put her through. Everything he had never known she would know. Everything she knew he would never know.

"Goodbye."

She turned and walked away. The lights dimmed in her wake as she entered the hallway. The night watchman had given her a keycard to seal the exhibit when she left, and she swiped it now, flipping open the panel and punching in the code to drop the blast doors.

Flash of blue.

Her head jerked to the side. The lights had clicked off now, the doors already sliding shut, locking her out. But there was no doubt that she had seen it. The light. That familiar, terrifying, exhilarating light.

Blue.

And there was a sound. There was no doubt that there was a sound, or that she had heard the sound, a murmur almost drowned out by the slamming door. It was there, just on the edge of her hearing, like a whisper from a dream. Or from the future. Or from the past.

"...goodbye."


	2. Ever, Lasts Forever

She dreamed of Portals.

It was the falling dream. Everyone had a falling dream, her therapist had told her. But hers was a little different than most people, because, she was sure, no one else had ever dreamed about falling through an infinite loop of flashes of orange and blue.

She woke with a jolt—that old, familiar feeling of  _impact,_  except that it never did really happen. All she knew was that she would keep falling until something goaded her into stepping out of that endless free-fall, and the kick shoved her through the glass into the waking world. It was a sensation she was accustomed to.

What she wasn't used to was the voice.

She pressed a hand to her forehead, and it came away wet. She shook off the heavy blanket and rose, her bare feet meeting the bare floor with a little shock of cold. Or cool, rather, but at the moment, anything felt cooler than the oppressive heat beneath that blanket. The AC must have shut down again. She'd asked the manager to send someone up to fix it, but...well, that was what she got for staying in a cheap hotel. Her therapist had offered to help her pay for the trip and a better hotel, but she had refused. This was  _her_  mission, after all. She had to be able to go it alone.

She crossed to the window and drew back the blackout curtains, sliding it open. The summer moon hung low and waning over the city, like a great, sleepy eye, half-open in the blackness. According to the weather reports, it was unseasonably hot for this part of the country—just her luck. At least the air outside was somewhat cooler than the air inside her room. And there was a little bit of a breeze. That always helped.

There had never been a voice in her dream before. The sense of urgency always varied, between a faint, nagging feeling that there was something she needed to be doing and a full-blown panic that she was trapped in free-fall and couldn't escape, but never had there been a voice  _outside._  A voice from beyond the flashes of orange and blue that called to her, leading her out of the endless loop.

" _Are you having fun? I mean, it looks like fun. All that falling. Without a floor to crash into. You look like you're having a grand old time in there. But, ah, I was just wondering. Did you forget that we're sort of trying to escape here? Right now? Immediately?"_

She rested her elbows in the windowsill, chin in her hands. It couldn't be a coincidence. After what had happened to her today, there was no way that hearing that voice in her dreams could be a coincidence. The problem was, she didn't  _want_  to hear that voice again.

And yet, she did.

A gentle breeze worked its way into the room around her, cooling the dampness of her forehead. She checked the clock behind her, on the bedside table. It had been a little over two hours since she'd returned, and if she hadn't been utterly exhausted from the walk back to the hotel, she probably would have lain awake for those two hours, restless and torn. But she had collapsed into her bed, barely stopping to take off her shoes, pulled the covers up to her chin, and then she was gone.

Good thing she'd walked, instead of calling a cab. She didn't  _want_  to lie awake all night, agonizing, wondering. The problem was, she was awake now. Her eyes were heavy, her mind slow and groggy, but she was awake. And now there was no escaping the uncertainty that pulled at her in either direction, each one irreconcilable with the other.

It could have been her mind playing tricks on her. That happened sometimes. Not as often as it could have, but sometimes she still saw flashes out of the corners of her eyes—red beams that might have been turrets lurking around a corner, scribbles of graffiti that could have belonged to the mysterious writer, bright red dots of light on out-of-reach cameras that might very well be even more of Her cold, calculating eyes. It wasn't that hard to believe that her mind was projecting again. Showing her what she expected to see, what she  _wanted_  to see (except she didn't want to see this, see him, never again...or did she?).

The only problem was, she  _didn't_  believe it.

She hadn't turned around. Hadn't tried to open the door again or go back inside. She had simply walked away. And that should have been enough for her. But there had to be a reason she was awake now, her fatigue receding into the background. There had to be a reason that she had  _heard_  him again, when she didn't (did) ( _didn't_ ) want to. And there certainly had to be a reason why she had asked the museum directors for copies of the transcripts.

It had felt like a whim, when she'd done it. Just a stupid idea, one that would have put even  _him_  to shame. But she had done it, and her personal datapad now sat on the table beside the alarm clock, full up to bursting with more information than she'd ever felt bothered to put on it before. She'd never really gotten the feel for them. She had only ever kept a few books, a few movies, the occasional game for when she grew bored and her mind searched out the one kind of distraction she had never been able to pass up (puzzle games, wasn't that ironic?)...and now this.

The urge was overpowering. She did her best to resist it. She needed to get back to sleep, after all. There were things she had to do tomorrow, and then a plane to catch later that night. If she stayed up any longer, she wouldn't be able to do anything in the morning.

She turned away from the window, crossed back to her bed, and sat down. Then the datapad was in her hands, and she cursed softly, tilting it away from her. Why was she doing this? Self-torture wasn't something she usually went in for.

This would have amused  _Her_  to no end, had She been here. And that thought made her look up again, carefully around at the corners of the room, the old suspicion rearing up once again. Logically, she knew that Her cameras could never have come this far—within the walls of Aperture Science, She was God, but without, She was only a memory, a mad tyrant ruling over Her kingdom of dust and bones. But even after so many years, that knowledge and fear of what it meant to be  _watched_  had never quite left her.

She turned on the datapad and dimmed the screen, so that it wouldn't hurt her eyes in the darkness. She didn't want to turn on her lights—it felt wrong, somehow. So she curled up on her bed in the darkness, her nose mere inches away from the screen, rereading the words she had promised she wouldn't touch again, wouldn't think about again, wouldn't even consider, now that she was supposed to have let go.

_GN: So let me get this straight. You went insane. And took over the entire facility._

_IDS(W): Er, yeah. Sort of. Well, not sort of, there was no 'sort of' about it. Except you've got it a little backwards there, because I definitely took over first, and_ then _I definitely went insane. But I'm better now, I really mean it. I'm not about to go bonkers on you._ No  _idea what came over me, not the faintest idea._

_**[Subject appears to be genuinely remorseful. Beginning to wonder how much time AS spent programming this thing to make it seem human. It's doing a damn good job of it. -JS ]** _

_GN: Okay. Well. What happened to GLaDOS?_

_IDS(W): Oh, her? Oh, that part was_ brilliant.  _I mean, not that going crazy was fun or anything, because I don't want to do it again, ever. But the potato bit was brilliant. I put her in a potato battery. All that power, all sealed up in a child's science fair project! Oh, it was grand, let me tell you. She hated it. Absolutely_ despised _it. I am almost one hundred percent sure that if I ever go back there, she's going to find some dreadful way to murder me for it, too._

_GN: And...what happened to the girl? Weren't you supposed to be getting her out of there?_

_IDS(W): Oh. Well. I was. Supposed to be, I mean. Except I didn't. And she, er, she was very cross with me._ Very  _cross. Perfectly good reason to be, too. I would have been cross with me, too. I mean, it wasn't a very smart thing to do, was it? Pound her down an elevator shaft. Although I guess going absolutely bonkers wasn't a very smart thing to do either, was it?_

_**[He gets nervous whenever Gabe mentions her. Either there's something he isn't telling us about her, or...well, the other option goes into a lot of arguments about the ghost in the shell and how much an AI can really feel, and I don't feel up to tackling** _ **that** _**little piece of insanity today. -EM ]** _

She had to push the datapad away, closing her eyes against the sick feeling that clenched at her stomach. She had read every single one of these transcripts from top to bottom just a few hours ago—she already knew where the conversation was going, and where it would end. But she still didn't know if she wanted to see it again. To accept it. Because that meant taking everything that had happened to her because of him and just...throwing it away.

He had tried to kill her. Period. Bottom line. End of story. She had trusted him, and at the first test of faith, he had gone completely haywire and tried to murder her.

No...he had trapped her first. He had turned her into his own personal lab rat, just like  _She_  had done. And  _then_  he had tried to murder her.

...but he was  _sorry._

It shouldn't have made any difference. She almost wished it hadn't, because it would have made everything so much less complicated. But that one word had started a chain reaction inside her that was only now beginning to come to fruition. It had slammed into her before and kept going, like a shockwave riding past through the crust of the earth. But the earth was round, and that shockwave was coming full circle now, even more powerful than it had been before.

He'd been no different than Her. That was a fact. But the other fact that she had neglected until now was that She had never felt...anything. Not until she had reawakened the part of Her that had once been human. And then She had promptly deleted that part of Herself, negating the fact of its occurrence altogether. But him...he was different.

 _IDS(W): Look, this is all well and great, but are we going to be finished any time soon? I mean, you can't have_ that _many questions for me._

 _GN: Why? You're an information_ goldmine. _The data we can pull from your memory will bring us leaps ahead in AI technology, as well as in anything else Aperture Science was working on._

_IDS(W): Wait—wait, nonono, you can't be thinking of pulling me apart! I'm too young to die! Oh, I should have stayed in space, even if I did have to deal with that obnoxious little—_

_**[Is self-preservation only a human instinct? This thing reacts to the slightest hint of danger with total panic. That has to be more than programming, doesn't it? -JS ]** _

_JS: Look, it's not like we have to tear you open or anything. Not entirely, anyway._

_IDS(W): Eurgh, I don't want to be torn open at all! And have_ things  _stuck inside of me? If you're going to dissect me, at least let me out of here for a while!_

 _GN: Out_ where? _I thought you didn't have anywhere else to go?_

 _IDS(W): Er, well, I don't. Not really. But it's not really a place I want to_ go.  _I'll come back , you can even send someone with me just to make sure. I just want to find her first. Is that really so much to ask? Just to find her? That's really the only thing I want, honestly, you can do whatever else you want—I just want to find her, there's something I have to tell her, something important._

_EM: Nobody knows where she is. They never gave out her name, when the stories went out. She's always been called "Subject Omega" by the general public._

_IDS(W): Omega? What sort of name is that? That isn't her name, not at_ all.  _Her name's_ _ **[REDACTED]**_ _. Are you_ sure _you can't find her?_

_GN: We'll see what we can do._

They never had found her. And...that made her angry.

It was unexpected, the way she found herself clenching at the sheet. That had been all he wanted from them. And she had never had any sort of contact, in the two and a half years between his discovery and the day the exhibit opened. Two and a half years of transcripts, and in every single one, he asked them if they had found her yet.

Had they even  _tried?_

She shouldn't be this angry. Not for his sake. But she was, whether she ought to be or not...she had the feelings, and she couldn't explain or control them. Whether she wanted them or not. And the only thing she could do now was the one thing she did best.

Cope.

She didn't know what to do yet. Didn't know which direction to step, wasn't sure which placement of which portal was the right one. She was in free-fall, that infinite loop of everything she knew and nothing she had ever known at the same time, spinning past in a blur that made her eyes water.

" _Come on, come on, we've got to keep moving!"_

For better or for worse, there was only one direction she  _could_  move. And that direction led straight into the mouth of a beast she had never thought she would confront. But she had no choice.

She had to escape the loop.

She had to move forward.


	3. Louder, Lips Speak Louder

Morning came too early. She had forgotten to close the blackout curtains, and the sun hit her full in the face. For all that she had once thought she might never see sunlight again...

She had fallen asleep with the datapad in her hand. It must have dimmed down into standby hours ago, then shut itself off completely. She lifted her head from its place, pillowed on her arms, and glared at the open window. Six o'clock in the morning was not a human hour. Six o'clock would have been one of Her hours, had She run on outside time. And it was a particularly hellish hour to be forced into wakefulness by the  _sun,_  of all things.

Speaking of sixes, she'd had six hours of sleep, in total. The human body could supposedly run on that much rest with no trouble. Given her current condition, she didn't buy it.

She rose and slid the window shut, pulling the blackout curtains back over the glass. Her room descended into blessed darkness. She sat down on the bed again, contemplating an attempt at more sleep. Her mind was beginning to wake up now, however, and she quickly scrapped that idea.

She laid back with her head against the pillow, sighing. While they were excellent at blocking out light, her curtains could do very little about sound—once again, the problems of a cheap hotel. Now that her brain was rousing itself, she could hear the hum of the city, a constant sound like tinnitus at the bottom of her hearing. Cars rumbled by on the pavement, above a low murmur of voices that had never really gone away. A few people were beginning to move around in the rooms above and beside her (what would possess them all to  _willingly_  rise this early?). The city had been in standby mode. Half-asleep. Dreaming. And now it was beginning to wake.

...was  _he_  awake?

Well. That hadn't taken long. She covered her face with her hands, letting out a soft sigh. If she was going to think about him, she could have at least waited until she'd had some food.

She stood again and changed quickly from her pajamas into day clothing. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up her datapad on the way out, tucking it into her purse. It was the work of moments to make her way down to breakfast, decide she would rather not risk eating anything provided by the hotel, and step out the door in search of real food.

It was already setting up to be another hot, humid day. Even this early in the morning, the air felt warm and close. Wonderful. Because she didn't suffer enough claustrophobia issues  _inside._  She drew in a deep, calming breath, and set off down the street, keeping an eye out for anything that looked appealing.

Her mind immediately began to wander. She was capable of rigid focus when she needed it (how else would she have survived Her little games?), but she didn't need it right now. So she found herself thinking. Daydreaming, even. Probably not the best idea, but since when had she ever done what was  _good_  for her?

...what would she say to him?

If he was there. If he was awake. If it hadn't just been a figment of her imagination.

They said that the human mind was capable of creating all sorts of hallucinations. Out here in the daylight, with hard pavement beneath her feet and open sky overhead, it was easier to believe that maybe it had been just that. A hallucination, cooked up by her subconscious to make her feel better. If it was, then there was really no reason to go back. No reason to feed these delusions, after all.

If they were delusions.

She walked into a fast-food restaurant and bought a breakfast wrap. Finding herself disinclined to sit down inside, she returned to the pavement, her feet carrying her along down the street. That happened to her, sometimes. It was part wanderlust, and partly a feeling that held over from  _before_ —the feeling that no matter what, no matter how tired she got or how much it hurt, she could never stop.

She ate as she walked, looking around at the bright, huge signs, and wondering at the tall buildings, apartments nestled on top of restaurants and stores. The city didn't have much room to build outward, so it had built upward. Sort of like Aperture Science. Except they had built downward, deeper and deeper until there was no telling how deep. She couldn't help but think that the entire time, they had been digging their own graves. It was a sleek, shiny, high-tech grave, to be certain, but a grave was a grave, no matter how ornate the tombstone.

It had almost been her grave, too. Several times. And she usually tried not to think about that. She just wasn't doing a very good job of it today.

The thought made her stomach clench, and she had to fold up her wrap and put it away, for fear of being ill. There was only one thing in that entire facility that hadn't tried to kill her. Hadn't even  _threatened_ to kill her, not in the entire time she had been trapped in that hell. And that one thing was  _not_  the thing waiting for her in the museum.

She chided herself for calling him a "thing"—and then caught herself with a start. Why was she defending him against  _herself?_  She wasn't even sure if what she had seen back there was real, and she couldn't stop thinking about it. Wondering. Hoping. Fearing.

Maybe her therapist had been right. Maybe she should have waited a little longer before coming, or maybe she shouldn't have come at all. The things she saw, the  _happenings,_  she compared to voices in her head, that got louder and softer as time passed. For a while, they had grown quiet and left her alone. It had been almost a month since she'd seen anything at all. And now—

Flash of blue.

Her head snapped up, eyes wide—but it was nothing. A traffic light. Green. Definitely  _green,_  because that was the color a traffic light turned when it was done being red. Not blue.

This was beginning to get out of hand.

The happenings were getting clearer. Brighter. Louder. This was the second time in as many days that she had seen  _something._ And that one had definitely been her mind playing tricks on her. But what about the first one? The one that had triggered all of this? Was that a happening, or an actual event? Did it matter? Did she even  _want_ to know? Would it change anything?

There was a roaring sound in her ears. She found herself swaying a little, the sick feeling beginning to well up in her stomach again. She stopped walking and put her hand out against a streetlight to steady herself, one arm wrapped across her belly. Panic gripped at her chest, and that only made the sick feeling increase, until her lips trembled and she almost had to drop to her knees. What was wrong with her? What was  _wrong?_

A dark, humorless smile quirked at her lips. That was a long list. Especially if you asked Her.

Several moments passed before the shudders ceased. She straightened carefully, running her wrist across her forehead. Damp and hot. She shouldn't have expected anything else.

Sound still roared in her ears, loud and close, and her head had begun to pound. But she had to keep moving. Lingering here was probably the worst thing she could have done—she had to get out of the heat, before something serious happened.

A set of wide, shallow steps made of beige stone led upward to her right. Steps like that usually meant some kind of big, public building, and big, public buildings always had AC. They usually had vending machines, too. She moved towards them with slow, deliberate steps, focusing on the ground in front of her. The stairs spun and danced in circles that might have been interesting, had they not made her want to retch. It took all of her concentration and plenty of assistance from the railing to make it up. And then she was staggering through the automatic doors, a wall of blessedly cold air slamming into her.

Ignoring the strange looks from the few people around her, she moved across to the nearest blank wall, leaned back against it, and slid to the floor. She rested her forehead against her knees and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. The world still felt like it was spinning around her, but at least she couldn't see it now. That helped a lot.

There was no telling how long she sat there—with her eyes closed, blocking the sunlight from view, time had recovered that strange fluidity that was so familiar. When the rocking sensation decreased to a reasonable level, she opened them again. The light didn't appear to have changed much, but all that meant was that it was the same day as it had been when she sat down. Her sight was still a little blurry, but at least the earth wasn't pulling barrel rolls any more. And her vision was clear enough that she could notice the silver, conical shapes rising up in state just off to her left.

She followed the shape upward, craning her neck back as the cones met and melded into a thick, white cylinder, which then ranked off into a thinner one, and then an even thinner one, and onward until it finally tapered off into a blunted, black nose cone high above her head.

A rocket.

Laughter bubbled up in her chest. She pressed her hands over her mouth as she stared up at it, her shoulders trembling violently with silent hysterics. She was back. She hadn't even meant to come here, had never intended for this to be her destination—and yet, here she was. Back inside the graveyard of humanity's past attempts at piercing the heavens. Back amongst the dead.

She seemed to associate with them quite a lot these days.

This time a little of that laughter escaped her, rebounding off the walls and the exhibits out in the main room. She shoved herself up off the ground, bracing herself against the wall as the room began to dance, and set off as soon as it steadied again. Every other step and she was staggering, using the walls and railings for support. She didn't care about the looks she was getting from the few other visitors. She didn't care about the fact that she was sweating again despite the chill, or about the pale chalkiness of her face, or about the wild, feverish glaze over her eyes. Every fiber of her being was focused on forward motion. The roaring in her ears grewing to a crescendo as she drew closer and closer, her steps and stumbles speeding into a shambling rush and then a dead run through the building, her heart pounding in her chest and the base of her skull, legs aching, a stitch tearing at her side—

_THERE._

She stepped wrong, staggered, and collapsed in a limp heap, skidding several feet across the floor. And she was  _there._  The room, that  _room,_  the one that curled in around her like a mausoleum, round and cold and close, and right there in the center, right where she had left him—

She laughed again, this time making no attempt to hide it. It bounced around her, far too loud in the silence, high and hysterical. She reached up to the dark blue ropes and pulled against them with all of her strength, until they toppled over with a  _crash_  of metal against tile. Then she pulled herself upright, using the console (that  _goddamn console_ ), and pressed her hands and her forehead against the cylinder, the glass fogging up below her ragged, uneven breaths.

He rolled over and tilted up, his optic (blue,  _blue,_  such a wonderful, terrible, familiar  _blue_ ) constricting in surprise.

"Oh. Er. Hello."


	4. Better, Back Together

Impossible.

Her fingers hooked around the glass. It was impossible.

Her eyes blurred. There was nothing, nothing around her except for this, for  _him._ Somewhere far away, there were sirens wailing, and a dim voice she barely registered that said something about a total lockdown. From somewhere between that distant place and here, there was a dull  _clang_  as a heavy door slid shut. But all that existed right here in her present were the console against her back, the glass under her fingers, and  _him._

Him.

"You look...er...well, not going to lie, you look pretty terrible. You should probably sit down or something. And rest, resting is a good thing. Absolutely the best thing you could be doing right now. Seriously, just sit right back down, right there. It's probably nice and cold. Very comfortable."

It was like nothing had changed.

How could he talk to her like nothing had changed?

Her shoulders shook. She stared at him through the glass, words dying in her throat, as they had always done, and probably always would. How could he? After all this time, after everything he had done,  _how could he?_

How could he hurt her like this?

How could he have hurt her like that?

"Er, okay, you're starting to look worse now. You should really, you know, lay down for a bit. You look pale. Paler than most humans. Not that pale humans look  _bad,_  but you're not supposed to be  _that_  pale, right? Not that you've got much reason to believe me or— What are you doing?"

She straightened, pushing herself back against the console. She reached into the purse slung haphazardly across her shoulders and pulled out her datapad. He was watching her, his optic wide in confusion, and god help her, all she wanted to do was  _rip it out,_  because he should  _know,_  he should  _know_  what he had done, how could he act so innocent, like he  _cared,_ with what he had  _done?_

She raised the datapad over her head with both hands, and brought it down with all her strength on the top of the cylinder.

He cried out in fear as the glass cracked, a circular pattern exploding outward like a spider's web. She clenched her teeth, baring them in a manic grin as she lifted the datapad and brought it down again. And again. And again.

_CRASH!_

The top caved in, but she didn't stop there. He was babbling now, his optic constricted into a tight, terrified blue dot, but she wasn't actually listening. His voice was just another sound in the background that didn't quite exist in her present. All she could hear was the crackle and crash of glass as she swung the datapad down over and over again, bashing at the top and sides of the cylinder until it was nothing more than shards. And then—only then—did she let it fall from her aching, stinging hands, reaching past the devastation to rest her hands against his shuddering mainframe.

He was warm.

"Have you gone  _mad?_  No no no put me down put me  _down!_ " His voice had jumped several octaves. Her head tilted a little to the side, but that was the only sign she gave that she had even registered his words, because she completely ignored his distress, lifting him off the pedestal. He was shaking like a leaf in a strong wind, turning, struggling weakly, a little heavier than she had originally thought, but that was okay, and what was that red smear across his plating?

Oh. She'd cut her hands on the glass. Oh well.

"Look, you should really sit down—well, no, there's glass all over the floor, you'll hurt yourself, we don't want that—maybe move over to the wall or something—wait no don't no no no  _OWW!_ "

She held him out at arm's length and dropped him. Slivers of glass scattered like water droplets as he hit the floor with a satisfying  _clunk._ He rolled a few feet, stunned into temporary silence, and she moved after him, the glass crunching beneath the soles of her shoes. She sort of liked that sound. She almost wished she had been there to step all over the fifteen acres of glass that She had supposedly picked up all by her lonesome. That would have been funny.

He cringed away, but she picked him up again. "Okay, I deserved that," he gasped. "I did. I really did. That was my fault entirely. But I'm serious, you need to get out of here and get help. You're going to kill yourself if you don't. And killing you would be bad. Very,  _very_  bad—wait wait stop  _OWW!_ "

She dropped him again. That time it wasn't quite as satisfying. She was too busy wrestling back the low, hot fury that was rising up in her chest for it to feel satisfying. He certainly hadn't seemed to care very much about keeping her alive  _before._  Why did he care now? Did he even care at all? Or was he just trying, as usual, to look out for himself?

He was whimpering softly when she picked him up the third time. Her lips were twisted in a silent snarl, and he shuddered violently, struggling against her grip. "Let me explain, I can  _explain!_  Please, I'm sorry, I'm  _so sorry,_  just let me explain, that's all I want to do, just—"

She dropped him again. And this time, he screamed.

The scream stopped her cold. There was real pain in it. Utter terror. And the sound of something breaking.

She dove after him, blind panic flooding through her. Something was wrong. Something inside him had  _snapped,_ she had heard it, and there were sparks shooting out from between the cracks in his plating, he was still screaming, and she hit the ground with glass cutting into her knees and elbows and sparks burning her arms, but there was no pain, only crushing dread as she pulled him into her arms, begging to god or whoever else was out there that she hadn't killed him, that he would be okay, that he—

He let out short, ragged, whimpering gasps, shivering like a child with fever. There was a crackling hiss of static behind his voice. There were no more words. He simply stared at her, his optic constricted to a tiny blue dot, a soft noise escaping him that could only have been a quiet, terrified sob.

He was afraid.

She had hurt him. And he was afraid.

What had she done?

He wasn't fighting any more. She curled into a fetal position, drawing him close to her chest. What had she done to him? God help her, what had she  _done?_

Was this what had happened to him?

He had been weak. And then suddenly, he had been strong. Suddenly, he'd had power like nothing he had ever known before. And suddenly, the person who had insulted him, hurt him, almost killed him, was entirely at his mercy.

"I'm sorry..." She could barely hear his words over the hissing static. "I'm sorry...so sorry..."

She pressed her cheek against his frame. Some small, disconnected part of her noticed it was wet. The rest of her was twisting around itself with guilt and despair. She understood now. It still wasn't right, what he had done, what  _she_  had done, but she understood.

Her chest hurt.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. Her throat was tight, and the words caught, but she pushed them out anyway. "I...forgive you...please..."

There was no reply.

She held him tight against her chest, squeezing her eyes shut. Every fiber of her body shook like a leaf lost in a hurricane. He couldn't... No. Not now. Not when she finally  _knew._  He had to be...he  _couldn't_  be...

"...please..." Her voice was faint. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dripping onto the metal, falling to the floor and scattering like shards of light. Why wasn't he moving any more? Why wouldn't he  _move,_ why wouldn't he answer her? What was wrong with him? What was  _wrong?_

What had she done?

They had told him. The memory surfaced in a flash, and a sob tore from deep in her chest. They had been right all along, because they had  _told_  him, and he had told her, that if he ever,  _ever_  detached himself from his rail, he would...

It could have been minutes or days or seconds or hours before the blast door slid open and  _people_  poured in. She registered dimly the heavy footsteps, the loud, commanding voices calling to her, but she didn't react—not until a hand reached down to grip at hers. Then she snarled, snatching her wrist away and curling up into a ball. She wasn't going to move. Not for them. Not for anyone. And no one was going to take him away from her.

They had to carry her, kicking and struggling, out of the room. They didn't touch her hands or wrists again, not after she tried to bite one of them and someone in charge yelled at them. By the time she was outside and being shunted into some kind of vehicle, the world around her had descended into a dull blur once again. Nothing out there mattered to her. None of it was real. Nothing but the scrapes and burns on her arms, the dull, throbbing pain in her skull, and the white sphere clutched in her arms, smeared with dark soot and slick blood.

They told her that she needed to let go. They told her it belonged to the museum, that it wasn't hers. They told her it was dangerous to hold onto it. They told her that if she didn't, she would be in trouble. She could go to jail. She could make herself sick. She might die.

All sorts of people talked to her, telling her these things. The men in heavy vests and helmets who had carried her away. People in white coats and green aprons with their hair all bound back and masks over their faces. People in fancy suits with glasses and briefcases. People who came to visit her when she was alone in her new room (white and sterile—what had happened to her old room? Her old home? No one would tell her.), the ones who talked like her therapist, except none of them were, and she didn't trust any of them, so they kept sending her new ones.

Eventually they stopped telling her.

She never did let go.

It was a long time before they brought in the familiar therapist, the woman she trusted. She would have hugged her, if her arms hadn't been bound up and still hurt a lot (and if she hadn't been busy hugging something else). They talked for a long time. She explained what had happened, and by the time she got to the end she was crying again, and her therapist hugged her, and talked to her like a human being—none of the others had done that. Then she said something about something called 'schizophreniform disorder', and told her that what she had been through, what she had seen, she had to hold onto it, no matter what anyone else told her. Because it was real. It was as real to her as the bed she was sitting on, or the ceiling above her head. Maybe it wasn't real to anyone else, because they had been on the outside. But to her, in her mind, it  _was_  reality. She just had to remember that.

She would.

She would always remember.

And she would never let go.


	5. EPILOGUE - Leave Me Out

"This is cold."

He folded his arms, scowling when she ignored him in favor of staring through the glass at the girl. "Even by your standards, this is  _cold._ "

"It had to be done." Her voice was soft, fingers pressed against the window. "I'm only doing my job. What else was I supposed to do?"

"Be a little more human, for starters."

He stepped forward to stand beside her at the window. The girl on the other side was asleep. Well, when he thought about it, she could hardly be called a  _girl_ —she had to be at least as old as him. But with her hair down, curled up on her bed with the sphere held close against her chest, he couldn't help but think of a young girl with her teddy bear, napping quietly without a care in the world.

Whoever it was that had stolen that innocence away from her, he was very tempted to hunt them down and exact revenge for her. Except for the fact that, by all accounts, she'd done a pretty good job at exacting revenge by herself.

She sniffed. "I don't expect you to understand. You're a code monkey, not a psychiatrist."

"I don't have to be a psychiatrist to know when someone's hurt," he said. "And you made some shitty choices trying to fix her."

Her eyes flashed with anger. "The next time  _you_  have to deal with a schizophrenic girl who very well could have wound up with DID from the torture she went through, who was hunted by two psychotic AI, betrayed by one of them who she thought was going to help her, and removed from society for well over fifty years  _on top of_  all of that trauma,  _then_  you can tell me if the decisions I made were shitty or not. Until then, shut your goddamn mouth."

Like it or not, she did have a point. A sullen silence fell between the two as they watched the girl's chest rise and fall, her breath stirring the loose tendrils of dark hair that fell over her face.

"This is only for a few weeks," she said into the silence. Her voice had calmed once more, returning to its cool, professional tone. "Until we're sure she's out of her psychotic break."

"Do you even know what happened in there?" He looked sideways at her. Her lips had pressed into a thin line. "From what I hear, the museum's security system had a catastrophic failure right before the lockdown. You don't know what the hell it was she saw in there."

Her brows quirked upward. "What else could it have been? Your own reports say that thing has been defunct for six months. Chief Newman turned it over to the museum because there was nothing else to get out of it." Now her eyes narrowed in slowly-dawning suspicion. "Unless there's something that was left out of your reports..."

He shrugged uncomfortably. That was straying a little too far into dangerous territory. "I'm just saying you shouldn't trust everything you read, that's all. What's going to happen to her?"

Her brows went up even farther at the abrupt change in subject, but thankfully she made no comment on it. "She'll stay here, and so will I. I'll keep talking to her. The first thing I have to do is determine whether or not it would be a detriment to her mental health to allow her to keep the sphere, or—"

"Let her keep it," he said without hesitation.

Now her eyebrows had almost disappeared into her hairline. "Do you have  _any_  kind of basis for this claim?"

"Nothing that'll satisfy you," he muttered. He would have made another snarky comment or five, except that the girl had stirred now, her brows creasing with some worry that marred the peaceful innocence on her face. Her arms curled tighter around the sphere, knees pulling inward until she had almost wrapped herself around it in a protective ball.

"Just  _look_  at her, Liz," he said quietly. "That thing is like her lifeline. Even if you didn't know that seeing it had sent her into the crazy-circuit in the first place, or that she attacked the first officer who tried to pull it from her, would you want to take it away?"

"Some people would see that as an excuse to take it away sooner." She sighed, rubbing at her temples. "It's my job to convince them otherwise. I just need time to do it."

"Time you don't have," he said. "Not if she's ever going to get out of here and get back to her normal life. What's your deadline?"

"Three weeks from now."

"That's cutting it a little short."

"You're telling me."

Silence stretched between them. Then he looked at her again, his lips curling downward in a frown. When he spoke again, his voice was dark. "This wouldn't have happened if you'd just let us talk to her."

Her shoulders slumped. "What the hell did you expect me to do?" she asked tiredly. "I didn't think she was ready. Doesn't this only  _prove_  that she wasn't? It wouldn't have gone any better if she had seen him alive. She probably would have done exactly the same thing."

"But you don't  _know_  that," he countered. "There's no way you'd ever know for sure. It could have helped her!"

"Or it could have made her worse!" she snapped. Then she deflated, her anger disappearing into exhaustion once again as she rubbed at her eyes. "I'm only human, Chase. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I regret that. But you know I'm only trying to help her."

Yet another good point. He was beginning to feel like a dick for even bringing it up. But he was right, too, and she knew it. She could profile and predict all she wanted, but there was never any guarantee that she would be right.

It had been  _her_ decision to keep all information about what they had found away from the girl. He had been the most vocal of their team against it, but Gabe had insisted that they respect her decision—so for two and a half years they had flat-out lied to something that was as close to remorseful and  _alive_ as he was sure they would ever see. And for what? To have the girl find out anyway, long after it had become a museum piece, and completely lose her mind over it? And then to tell her that the whole thing had never actually happened, when she herself didn't even know whether it had or not? How could that possibly be classified as  _helping?_

"I know you don't approve. You don't have to say it again." She touched the glass again, gently. "But believe me when I say I'm doing the best I can."

"Do better."

She shot him a venomous glare, but he ignored her. The girl was stirring again. One arm slid from the surface of the sphere and flopped down to the mattress, her elbow hanging over the edge. Even from here, the ragged scars she had come away with from her confrontation with the glass were visible up her arm, pale and fresh above the darker scars from years before. He wondered if she wore long sleeves at work, and if she wore them at home as well...

The door behind them opened. "Excuse me," the security guard said. "Your time is up. Please follow me."

She turned away immediately, but he lingered at the window for a few seconds more. The girl shifted again, the muscles in her face tensing and releasing, and then her eyes fluttered open. She was still facing the window, and he had the sudden feeling that she was looking  _through_  it, straight through the mirror-tint at him, even though he knew it was impossible. 'Where are you going?' those cloudy blue eyes seemed to ask. 'Why are you leaving me here? What's going to happen to me?'

He didn't have the answers. Not right now. But he was going to find some.

He turned and walked away. The security guard slid the door shut behind him.

Inside her room, on the other side of the looking-glass, the girl closed her eyes again, her arms folding possessively around the sphere in her arms. There was nothing else to do but go back to sleep, and wait.

**FIN.**


End file.
